


you're the one that i love & i'm saying goodbye

by wshxn



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 16:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13551462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wshxn/pseuds/wshxn
Summary: baekhyun likes to remember the way his name falls from sehun’s lips with every call of it.





	you're the one that i love & i'm saying goodbye

baekhyun likes to remember the way his name falls from sehun’s lips with every call of it.

how every syllable roused baekhyun as if to remind him that he’s lucky to have sehun holding his hand through the crowd and standing strong like a pillar; how sehun’s smile, bright and boundless, reminds baekhyun of anything beautiful and blinding. he likes to commit to memory waking up to the long curve of sehun’s back hunched over in prayer, pleading for more time, _more for baekhyun, more for us_. baekhyun hadn’t known what it all meant back then, as he would press his lips on sehun’s shoulder, his nape, in greeting.

but baekhyun also remembers screaming his lungs out when the news broke.

he remembers sehun’s eyes, mournful and despondent, his lips bleeding between his teeth as he trembled at the sound of baekhyun’s cries. baekhyun remembers being held tight against a broad chest with a familiar beating heart, remembers being kissed over and over again through his tears, begging to whoever god listening to _not take sehun away, please_ , and he remembers sehun telling him he loved him and only him in broken sentences.

baekhyun has hoped to forget since.

  
  
  
  
  


 

_baekhyun, it’s time to go._

he feels jongin’s words, lost and unsure, press heavily onto his skin, voice shaking as the taller man pleads on his knees for baekhyun to come out of hiding from under his bed. baekhyun doesn’t want to leave, lying unblinking on his empty stomach with his bloodshot eyes as he fiddles with the toy soldiers he’d been keeping there along with his past, until he hears his mother call his name, _begging_ , and the sobs begin again.

everything is a blur, and baekhyun feels nothing, even when jongin gently draws patterns on the back of his hand with a thumb. _i’m right here, baekhyun. i’m not going anywhere. i’m right here._

it is too quiet when he walks into the room, its clinical whiteness and the silence, thick and unsettling, suffocates him to no end even if he has been in this room countless times. it is the same room where he held sehun’s hand through his therapy sessions, through most of his pain that left sehun sobbing into exhaustion until the pain recedes into numbness and deep slumber. it is the same room where his nights have become sleepless as he counted the minutes that ticked by because every second mattered, and it is in this very room where he would listen to sehun whisper to him _thank you_ and _i love you_ and _please let me go_.

but baekhyun couldn’t―he won’t. perhaps he never will.

he wishes this all to be a nightmare―a sick joke―that sehun will jump out of this bed, radiating like sunshine and poking fun at baekhyun’s bewildered face and his childlike scowl. baekhyun stubbornly places a paper bag over his head because he refuses to see, to believe. but even if this is so, his eyes remain closed, his tracks all too familiar and memorized.

his knees hit the edge of the bed, fingers curling around the metal railings. he could hear sehun struggling, catching his breath as he speaks baekhyun’s name―altogether painful and relieving. how he missed it so.

 _baekhyun, please,_ sehun croaks, fatigue laced in every syllable as he reaches out to hold baekhyun’s wrist like an anchor, keeping himself from drowning further. baekhyun’s sight rests on his sneakers, and his knees begin to buckle. _baekhyun, i want to see your face._

with shaking hands, baekhyun lifts the bag off his head and yet, he keeps his eyes closed, lips quivering at the mere sound of sehun’s crippled voice. _baekhyun, look at me._

and maybe he shouldn’t have.

maybe he shouldn’t have greeted sehun hello during that jazz concert, or struck up a conversation in the bus stop to middle school. maybe he shouldn’t have expressed interest over that new ‘call of duty’ game, or stayed over talking about the university of their choices, renting an apartment together, sleeping through rainstorms, and poking fun at their professors over animal crackers and mario cart. maybe baekhyun shouldn’t have stood on the tips of his toes to meet sehun halfway to catch his lips on his that one wintry afternoon, the first of many, when wondering has become unbearable and being brave was all that was left as he closed their distance with finality he thought would last.

but the world is a terrible place―cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. _didn’t we deserve a happy ending?_

sehun is still just as beautiful, and this scares baekhyun most, because even if sehun is at his most vulnerable state, baekhyun is swept off his feet. _i love you_ , is all he manages to say. _i love you._ and sehun tells him, _you are the best thing that ever happened to me._

and he lets go.

  
  
  
  
  


 

baekhyun bids him farewell in whispers, eyes downcast and void of tears because sehun wouldn’t have wanted them shed on his behalf. there is a lily between his fingers, soft and pure like sehun’s smile that one spring day, and he bids him farewell for now.

and in the morning on the first of july, he thinks he sees sehun standing under the summer lights―smiling, dancing, _living_ ―and this is how baekhyun will always remember him.

**Author's Note:**

> i love sebaek, i swear.


End file.
